Buy a Chromebook, get 1TB of cloud storage for two years

It's getting to be all-out warfare in the low-cost computing market. In response to the growing interest in cheap Chromebooks, Intel and Microsoft have been working together to push sub-$200 Windows laptops into the market place through its hardware partners. That's caused Chromebooks to come down in price as well, but it isn't stopping there. Google today announced that new Chromebook buyers can get 1TB of Google Drive cloud storage for two years at no additional cost.

Fastest. SSD. Ever.

The Samsung 840 Pro landed on our Best of the Best list when it was launched in December 2012, and it has remained at the top of the SSD pile ever since, thanks to its blistering speed, impeccable pedigree, and superb software. Shortly after the Pro launched, Samsung debuted a non-Pro drive, named simply “840,” that was designed for those who wanted a less expensive drive with a smaller three-year warranty. This month, Samsung is replacing the regular 840 with the 840 Evo, an all-new drive that slots in below the 840 Pro, thanks to its three-year warranty (the Pro’s is five years) and more reasonable pricing. The Evo is also offered in a full range of capacities, from 120GB all the way up to 1TB, making it the first Samsung SSD available at that size and putting the 1TB Crucial M500 directly in its sights, although the Evo does cost $50 more at $650 MSRP.

Note: This review was originally featured in the October 2013 issue of the magazine.

Big capacity stuffed into a small size SSD

Ultrabooks and laptops in general aren't getting any chunkier these days, and to accommodate increasingly thin profiles, mSATA form factor solid state drives (SSDs) are taking the place of 2.5-inch drives. That doesn't mean you'll need to give up storage space. Samsung today launched its 840 Evo mSATA SSD line, among which is the industry's first 1TB mSATA-based SSD, the company claims.

An end-around solution to storing common files in Flickr.

In the process of overhauling Flickr, Yahoo announced that photographers would be allowed to upload up to 1TB of photos and videos for free, the only restrictions being the size of each individual file (200MB for photos and 1GB for 1080p videos) and length of clips (up to 3 minutes long). Other than those caveats, it's a generous storage container that's big enough to hold half a million photos shot at 6.5 megapixels. But what if you could also upload common files? There's a way you can do that.

One of the big knocks against SSDs is that they simply don't have the same storage capacities as traditional mechanical HDDs. Well, that argument's about to fly out the window: OCZ is finally making good on its promise to deliver a 1TB SSD as part of its 2.5-inch Octane lineup.

Art is about freedom of expression, and it sometimes results in controversial pieces that challenge the social norms or intentionally push the boundaries of decency for one reason or another. But does there ever come a point when artwork crosses the line? A 1TB external hard drive sitting on a white pedestal at the Art 404 gallery begs that very question, the one you have to ask when someone crams $5 million worth of illegally downloaded software into a storage device and calls it art.

Whoa there fella, hold the boat, you mean AVADirect deals in hard drives too? It's not incredibly unusual for system builders to sell standalone hardware, and like its bulk OEM brethren, AVADirect wheels and deals a whole host of PC parts, from cases to KVM switches, and just about everything else you can think of. Getting back to the storage side, AVADirect tells us the company just expanded its HDD lineup to include 1TB drives for notebooks.

Toshiba this week announced its first 2.5-inch hard drive series to offer up to 1TB of storage in the industry standard 9.5mm high form factor. The company's new MQ01ABD series uses 500GB platter technology and is available in capacities ranging from 1TB down to 250GB. This isn't the first drive to offer 1TB in a standard notebook form factor, but according to Toshiba, its flagship mobile HDD offers an industry leading areal density of 744Gb/in2, an increase in the quantity of data stored per square inch by over 37 percent compared to prior 2.5-inch models.

It wasn't that long ago the largest notebook hard drive you could buy was 500GB. Now here comes Western Digital with its newly announced WD Scorpio Blue 1TB hard drive for mainstream notebooks, and it isn't even the first of its kind. It is, however, one of just two 1TB hard drives built around the industry standard 9.5mm, 2.5-inch form factor (Samsung's Spinpoint M8 being the other) instead of the 12.5mm thickness standard, which means it's compatible with nearly all existing laptops.

Just when you though mechanical hard drives were starting to go out of style in favor of SSDs, Seagate went and did something that's drumming up a bit of excitement in the storage space. The hard drive maker broke the areal density barrier by announcing the world's first 3.5-inch HDD featuring 1TB of storage capacity per disk platter. Seagate's accomplishment should pave the way for more capacious and higher performing hard drives.